Creamy and sweet, dulce de leche is a confection made by slowly cooking milk and sugar into a caramel lover’s dream. The slow cooking evaporates water from the milk, concentrating natural sweetness, while the sugars in the mix slowly gain a bronzed hue. The treat can be made from scratch by long-simmering milk and sugar, or by using a shortcut that involves boiling a can of sweetened condensed milk. But for a no-fuss batch you don’t have to babysit, your sous vide machine is the way to go.
Like many other sous vide cooking projects, this one will take several hours, but they’re all unattended. As long as you have a good cover that prevents too much evaporation in your water bath, you can walk away with no worries about overcooking pans of sugar or overheating cans on the stove. Simply scrape the contents of a can of sweetened condensed milk into a canning jar, screw on the lid, and submerge the whole thing in a 185 degree Fahrenheit water bath sous vide set up. Set the timer for 10 hours, and you’ll come back to a caramelized wonder you can put to use right away. If you prefer darker dulce de leche, leave it for a couple more hours. And if you don’t have the kit already, you can simply buy a sous vide wand like this one, which works with your pans at home, or go the whole hog and buy a full sell-contained sous vide machine.
Tempting ideas for your homemade dulce de leche
You might be tempted to just eat your dulce de leche by the spoonful, warm from the cooking jar, and we would not blame you at all. However, you could fill a batch of alfajores sandwich cookies with your sweet sauce. It’s delicious stirred into your favorite iced coffee, or folded into an easy homemade ice cream, too — but we especially love the contrast of chocolate, caramel, and sea salt in these stuffed millionaire’s cupcakes. Sea salt is always a good addition to a helping of dulce de leche to get that savory sweet contrast.
You can make nearly endless flavor varieties of dulce de leche by stirring in your chosen ingredients after cooking the sweetened condensed milk. Adding them before cooking might result in unwanted off flavors because of the long cooking time, so hold off until the end. How about a spoonful or two of dark rum or a spicy rye whiskey? A few shakes of cinnamon or nutmeg, or a drop or two of orange oil also work well. You could even combine one or two of these ideas, but be sure to taste as you go to avoid overwhelming the delicate milk-caramel flavor of your homemade dulce de leche.
